Sunday, July 7, 2013

Off with the Movies

Life is often best appreciated by recognizing the futility of a whole bunch of hyped-up things. It doesn't do much for motivation, at least not in the ways motivational speakers make it out to seem. But too often, light bulb moments release you from the dilemma at hand instead of solving it. Yeah, I know, it sounds escapist, but wait until you realize you can switch off the TV instead of deciding between a sleazy ("passionate") soap opera and a violent ("action-packed") gore-fest.

Life is also often about realizing that one is a less-than-perfect most of the time and an idiot the rest of the time, sorry to say. The movies make it look like everyone is basically a good guy in a bad circumstance, except of course the evil-laughing/mean-scowling bad villain. This is humanist philosophy at play: everybody's good and if everybody does their best the universe will be perfect. But its a lie they put in the movies in direct contradiction of the fact that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of GOD. They even go a step further with the latest breed of sympathy-for-the-devil movies, in which the lead actor is a social misfit with a taste for blood, heathen manners and versed in obscene vocabularies; but the director goes ahead to weave the criminal's tale so as to elicit the viewer's sympathies.

I read somewhere that when one enters a movie theater, his/her guardian angel waits outside. I can't say I've abstained from watching movies of late but I must confess I can see why that would be the case. The danger with fantasy arises when it distracts its addicts from real and present dangers. While daydreaming about fictional superheroes saving the world or them-against-the-world-type highfalutin romances encountered on screen, the enemy as a roaring lion walketh about seeking whom he may devour. Indeed, the very act of watching the movie is the enemy mauling your vigilance. One begins to say "Peace and safety" whereas sudden destruction could suddenly fall upon one. And even the blind can see that sudden destruction in the pipeline: the ascendant despotism disguised as democracy, the decline of economies everywhere, increasing militarization, assaults by our governments on human rights and freedoms, the sacrifice of privacy for security, the resurgent political church... the movies aren't preparing us for any of this.